


in search of

by kiriqakure



Category: Hakuouki
Genre: AU where Chizuru knows anatomy lol, Angst, F/M, Gen, Harada's Edo Blossoms route, Spoilers, Trauma, some blood and violence but not very descriptive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-30 00:13:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17213498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiriqakure/pseuds/kiriqakure
Summary: Chizuru's first kill.





	in search of

**Author's Note:**

> spoilers for Harada's Edo Blossoms route. please don't read on if you don't want spoilers!
> 
> this is my take on Kodo's death scene! I was severely disappointed that Chizuru wasn't the one to off Kodo... apparently she's bad at aiming or something and didn't even manage to stab him in the heart. and since it's been mentioned that she did get basic sword training, I decided to just... add a little more training lol. pretty much everything is the same - I just changed his murderer and added some stuff.
> 
> inspired by basically all of metisket's work for KHR on AO3, particularly "Close to Home" and probably "What We Fought For". her writing is fantastic so please check it out!
> 
> also shoutout to ben for the hakuouki livetexting sessions, I love you ♥
> 
> constructive criticism is always appreciated!

“These things are worthless,” Father laughs, his Furies mindlessly lapping away at their fallen comrades’ wounds behind him. “We must detach ourselves from these earthly totems if we have any desire of bettering our people.”

Chizuru hadn’t asked him about material possessions. She’d asked him about the friends and loved ones his Furies – once normal men – had left behind.

She’s made up her mind.

Her hands shift from the shaking fists at her side to grip her kodachi tightly.

She knows what to do. Yamazaki’s taught her the anatomy. Kondo and Saito have trained her in the way of the sword. And Okita’s made sure she knows the kodachi at her hip isn’t just for decorative purposes.

 _I can do this,_ she thinks, walking up to the man she once addressed as “Father”. _I have to do this._

In the back of her mind, a small voice reminds her of the irony of the entire situation: she’d spent the last four years with the Shinsengumi searching for her father, only to kill him at their second meeting after four years. She shakes it off, though. She doesn’t need distractions right now. Her eyes are focused on the area where she knows his heart lies.

She slides the kodachi out of her scabbard slowly. He’s still yammering away about how with her by his side, they could achieve great things together. For a moment, she considers shutting her eyes so she can pretend it’s someone else she’s killing. But then she remembers that Okita once told her: _if you’re going to kill someone, you can’t be a coward about it._

Chizuru inhales. Exhales.

And then in one swift move, she slides her kodachi out, takes aim, and stabs him in the chest.

She knows she’s stabbed the right spot when the blood doesn’t stop flowing. Her father sputters, and doesn’t follow up with any mocking laughter. Almost experimentally, she twists her blade to the left a little – he lets out a garbled cry of pain, but her attention is on the sound his flesh makes. Then she pulls it out quickly, because she has no interest in becoming anything like those Furies.

He crumbles to the ground, hand clutching at his chest. As if she’s in a trance, she watches as he coughs up blood. Somehow, though, her father – no, Kodo – manages to speak.

“You… all those years I raised – _hrgh!_ – you… and… yet… you – urgh – do this… to… me?”

On any other day, Chizuru’s instinctive response would have been the familiar pang of guilt. _An oversized sense of responsibility,_ Okita had said of her, once. And she does feel guilty, because he’s right: he’d singlehandedly raised her for years.

Kodo deserves a response, at least. He’s dying, after all. She was the one who stabbed him.

“I know. But I don’t regret this.”

His eyes close. “…I see.”

More blood gurgles out of his mouth. Then his chest stops heaving. She doesn’t need to check his breathing to know he’s dead.

Okita had told her killing was ugly. He told her killing was cold. And somehow, she thinks he’s right: her hands are covered in Kodo’s still-warm blood, but she feels cold.

He just never told her how it would feel to look at the victim’s corpse.

For a while, she just stares vacantly at the body. The sounds of fighting and the stench of blood fade into the background, even as she distantly registers the sound of Sanosuke’s shouting. _The world is so quiet after you kill someone,_ Chizuru thinks. Her kodachi is still dripping with blood.

Then she comes back to her senses when someone starts shaking her shoulders.

“Chizuru! Chizuru! Can you hear me?”

It’s Sanosuke. He has a worried look in his eyes. There’s blood on his face. Hopefully, not his own.

“I’m okay,” she hears herself say. “I killed Fath- Kodo. I think he was the same as me, a Demon. I stabbed him in the heart. He’s dead now, so you don’t have to worry about him.”

_You have to pull yourself together. Come on, Chizuru._

So she summons her best smile. But Sanosuke doesn’t look convinced. If anything, his brows just scrunch further together. He sets his spear down beside him, and gently puts his arms around her like she’s a fragile doll.

“I’m sorry I put you through that. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect you from… this.” His voice is trembling. Sanosuke’s voice never trembles.

She breathes in his scent, face buried into his shoulder. He stinks of sweat, but she’d take the smell of sweat over blood at this point.

She says, “It’s okay. I’m okay.” And then she adds, “It was my duty, not yours. And you protected me from the Furies. Thank you.”

Besides, Sanosuke has always been shielding her from the ugly things – things he felt a lady shouldn’t have to see or go through, least of all an innocent girl like her. She’s been coddled for far too long. She can’t keep letting him do all the dirty work, while she stands to the side covering her eyes in fear.

Not that she says any of this to him, of course, because she knows he’s just going to disagree. But for now, she lets him hug her close to her body so he knows she’s still alive and well.

Before long, though, they have to bid Shiranui farewell. In a rare show of tact, he had chosen not to say anything about Kodo when he’d finished off the Furies and came back to see them hugging while Chizuru’s bloody kodachi hung at her side, Kodo’s lifeless body behind her.

But Shiranui doesn’t feel right leaving like this. He remembers his first kill. He knows he wasn’t born thinking fighting to the death was fun. So before he leaves, he turns back one final time and looks her in the eye.

She used to look fearful in his presence. Now, she almost looks wistful. Shiranui has to bite back a laugh, and schools his expression into a serious one.

“You… Demon woman.” Now she looks surprised. He searches for the right words.

“Just remember that… one day, this will pass.” Then he turns away before he sees her expression change to one of realisation, and then sadness. He’s never been good with crying women, he reasons. Anyway, he knows Harada gets what he’s trying to say. All murderers have to come to terms with this. And he refuses to be around to help her through it, because he won’t associate himself with her or Harada or humans any longer.

Shiranui doesn’t look back.

Under the moonlit night sky, Chizuru whispers, “Thank you.”

***

Her dreams usually follow a recurring theme: the scene from a few years ago is replayed, but with variations. Sometimes she doesn’t pull her kodachi out, so she watches as her father drowns in his own blood, all the while choking curses at her. Sometimes she stabs him in the wrong place – and as it turns out, he _is_ a Demon, so he heals almost immediately, and makes sure she regrets her mistake forever when he kills Sanosuke. Sometimes Shiranui shows up and does the job for her, and then contemptuously spits at her, “In the end, you’re just a useless coward.”

And sometimes, it’s her sitting before her father, whose chest has a gaping hole in it. He reads out a list of the names of people who sacrificed themselves to protect her: the Shinsengumi soldiers who were killed by the Demons, Heisuke who only became a Fury because Amagiri nearly killed him when he used both his swords to protect her, every Captain who put their lives on the line just for her…

Chizuru feels inexplicably responsible for each and every one of them. She doesn’t need anyone to tell her that.

But no matter what she dreams of, she wakes up sweating and shaking, eyes wildly searching the room for… what, she doesn’t know. Maybe it’s to confirm that Sanosuke’s still sleeping beside her in their shared futon; that their son is sleeping soundly in the baby hammock Sanosuke made for him; or that she’s in the home they made for themselves, and not in the middle of a forest with her father’s bloody corpse in front of her.

The shaking eventually subsides, and she calms down. It’s become a routine for her. She doesn’t go back to sleep because she knows their son will probably wake up and start wailing within the hour, so that she or Sanosuke has to soothe him. But mostly, it’s so she won’t dream again.

Most nights though, Sanosuke wakes when she sits upright. He doesn’t say anything – just puts his arms around her until her breathing evens out. She’s thankful that he chooses not to use words.

 _One day, this will pass,_ she reminds herself.

Chizuru turns to Sanosuke, and smiles.


End file.
